The 100 Most-Cited Articles in Liposuction: A Bibliometric Analysis

Area of Science:

• Plastic Surgery
• Bibliometrics
• Evidence-Based Medicine

Background:

• Liposuction is a common cosmetic surgical procedure globally.
• Previous citation analyses in plastic surgery have not qualitatively or quantitatively appraised the most-cited liposuction works.
• The quality of evidence and use of validated outcome measures in highly cited liposuction literature remain underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To perform a bibliometric analysis of the top 100 most-cited liposuction articles.
• To evaluate the characteristics and quality of this seminal literature.
• To hypothesize that the use of validated outcome measures and levels of evidence would be low among these articles.

Main Methods:

• Identification of the 100 most-cited liposuction articles from Web of Science (1950-2020).
• Extraction of study details, including citation count, main subject, and outcome measures, by two independent reviewers.
• Assessment of the level of evidence for each included study.

Main Results:

• The top 100 articles received a total of 4809 citations (mean 92 per article).
• The majority of articles were Level of Evidence 4 (33%) or 5 (35%), indicating case series or expert opinions.
• No articles achieved Level 1 evidence; only one used a validated objective cosmetic outcome measure, and none used validated patient-reported outcome measures.

Conclusions:

• The analysis highlights a low overall level of evidence in the most-cited liposuction literature.
• There is a significant lack of validated outcome measures in foundational liposuction research.
• Prioritizing higher-quality study designs and validated outcome measures is essential for improving patient satisfaction and clinical care in liposuction.